Thursday, April 30, 2015

Beautiful People #8: Lili and Alicia

Look how consistent I am, always getting these up within the last couple days of the month. Yes. Of course it's consistency, not forgetfulness or laziness. Never. :-P

This month's Beautiful People topic is siblings! Here you get to meet Lili and Alicia from one of my plot bunnies. It's not really formed enough to call it a WIP.

I literally gave my MC a sister JUST because of this Beautiful People theme. (See Cait? I kind of took your advice...) I always think oh it would be awesome to write a sibling story and then I always forget to give my characters siblings. So here we go! Finally.

These sisters are a conglomeration of my and my sister. I'm seeing mirroring. It's not that I'm one and my sister is the other. We (as a duo) mirror these two (as a duo). Hm.

Let's do a little introduction. Alicia (left) is the MC of what is currently called The Glare of the Spotlight, and she is 18, four months away from going to college. She lives in Chicago with her family.
Lili is 20, and kinda living the life in New York. She's almost done with her second year at Columbia University.

1. What is the first memory they have of each other?
Lili's first memory is when her parents took her and her baby sister to the beach and Lili tried to feed Alicia sand because she thought that babies ate dirt. She clearly remembers thinking that is was an obviously logical thing to do, though now she can't recall her exact 3-year-old logic behind it.

If you ask Alicia for what her oldest memory of her sister is, she'll probably say bouncing on the beds upstairs. But she won't be sure. "First memories" are a hard thing to remember for a younger sibling.

2. Describe their relationship in 3 words.Deep midnight conversations

OR

"Deep" midnight conversations

Include or ignore the quotation marks as you wish.

3. What kind of things do they like to do together?
They love doing creative things together like planning out parties or making gifts for people's birthdays or anything else they can think up. In the summer, Tuesday afternoons are reserved for ice cream outings.
Some days you may find them shouting (I mean singing, of course) along to the radio or attempting to sing through entire Broadway Musicals. And impromptu jam sessions (Alicia on the violin and Lili on the piano and vocals) pop up every so often too.

4. What was their biggest fight?

They generally get along very well, and their arguments generally die down quickly, probably because Alicia clams up and retreats to her room. Half an hour later all is well again, and they've reconciled.

However, over the course of the book, they are going to go through their biggest fight that kind of leaves them estranged for a bit. The fight arises over a decision that Alicia has to make about going with her boyfriend to Europe, and Lili is against it. Alicia goes anyway. Commence hard feelings - hard feelings that linger because they're miles from each other and not forced to make up.

5. How far would they go to save each other?
Oh, very far. In the story they don't really face that many dangers to their physical being, but they're there for each other emotionally.

Their relationship makes me think of the following quote from Jane Eyre. Of course, Rochester here is referring to romantic love, but it totally works here too:

"I sometimes
have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near
me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs,
tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the
corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous
channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am
afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous
notion I should take to bleeding inwardly."

6. What are their pet peeves about each other?
Alicia doesn't always appreciate Lili's bluntness. Or how she sometimes looks at the world as very black and white. And Lili can occasionally slip into older sibling syndrome and get a little bossy.

Lili thinks Alicia drives like a madwoman. And does she HAVE to leave her bobby pins EVERYWHERE?

7. What are their favorite things about each other?
Alicia loves (and is moderately jealous of) how Lili always looks put together - approachable and fun, but still professional. She also thinks it's awesome how enthusiastically and wholeheartedly Lili jumps into things when she starts a project.
Lili thinks that Alicia is the cutest. She loves her carefree attitude - but also the pensiveness that Alicia hides behind that. The world sees Alicia as quiet and quirky, and Lili loves how many hidden depths there are to her sister.

8. What traits do they share? Mannerisms, clothing, quirks, looks, etc?
They both share an affection for button down shirts, fun scarves, and generally colorful clothes, but their styles are absolutely different.
They both have long hair (though Alicia cuts hers super short later in the book), and both have pretty straight teeth.
They both love nerdy jokes and riddles. They scrunch up their noses in the same way.

9. Who has the strongest personality?
Lili has the stronger. She's eager to jump into experiences wholeheartedly.

10. How does their relationship change throughout your story?I'm really not sure if their relationship drastically changes, since the story isn't really about that relationship (it's actually about Alicia and her fella). BUT. They do go through some growth. Lili learns to let her sister go (and not be as big-sister-imposing). And hey, look at that - the string connecting their two hearts didn't snap when Alicia travels miles across the ocean! (Skype might have helped.)Alicia realizes how much she counts on her sister and how much she really does need her in her life.

Do you have siblings in your stories? What about siblings just in general? And what do you think of Alicia and Lili?

12 comments:

Awww they sound so cute, I mean shouting and singing along to the radio is a must activity for siblings, and jam sessions yes. My younger brother is eight, but we both started violin together and can do duets. Love the Jane Erye quote. Great job on making them realistic, I laughed at the bobby pin thing, they really do end up everywhere.

They are absolutely lovely! The quirks, flaws, and all! Capturing siblings can be difficult, you have to get the fighting and the "deep" midnight conversations down. Which for me, can be really hard. But I think you're going to do it fabulously! I honestly can't wait to see what their story will be like!

I love them! The impromptu jam sessions especially sound cool. The girls feel so real, too, like you've got a pretty solid grasp on their relationship.And I love that quote! I haven't read Jane Eyre, but that quote is perfect for all the best relationships. :)I've got siblings in almost all my stories, haha. But I think maybe two have ended up being only children? Of course, then I gave them siblings during the book... So yeah. Basically all my charries have siblings.

BOBBY PINS. HAHA. Little disappearing pieces of devilish metal, I say. >.> (In other words: I'm constantly shrieking at my sister to remove her bobby pins from my sight.) ANYWAY. They sound adorable and I love those pictures of them. ^-^ And their character development still sounds epic!! AND PFFFT. Don't feel bad about being late. I'm so late, I'm non-existent. -_-

The interesting thing is, that for this Beautiful People Edition I rediscovered the only siblings I had in my stories :-) if otherwise I wouldn't have added siblings to any stories, though I really would have been tempted...

"Deep" midnight conversations... like the ones I have with my friends at sleepover parties? Or when my brother wants to sleep in my room and get read to, even though he's already old enough to read himself? Sounds just like that :D

I find it interesting, how so many people use pictures from the internet to picture their characters. I usually never find one that fits, because in my imagination they're ALWAYS too different. I've tried t draw them too, but then the tend to be comic figures and not the characters I have on mind too... though I totally understand that you sometimes need a picture of a character :-)

See, I use pictures because I never exactly clearly imagine my characters. So the pictures I have aren't exact, but they give me a general idea so that when I write I know kinda what I'm working with, if that makes sense?

They sound great! I have an older sister and we have a similar age gap to Alicia and Lili so I can totally see them as us! I love sister stories. When you think about it, they're fairly rare -- maybe that's because I don't read many contemporaries, but in fantasy at least, I can't think of too many sister stories. The only one that springs to mind is Arya and Sansa Stark ...

In my WIP my MC has an older sister and an older stepsister, but they don't have a great relationship; they're not always very nice to her. Still, I'm trying to develop their relationships - blood is thicker than water and all that.